This invention relates to the commercial raising of fowl, and more particularly, to devices facilitating transportation of young chicks from a hatchery to a growout house.
The poultry production industry has made numerous changes during recent history in the name of progress and efficiency. A single poultry farm no longer is the site of hatching chicks, raising chickens, and processing chickens. Instead, the poultry industry today is divided into highly specialized areas that bring hatchlings through their life cycle and on to the marketplace. Specifically, the industry is divided into hatcheries, growout houses that raise hatchlings from the time they are a few hours old until they are harvested, processing plants, distributors, and retailers.
The industry is divided into these highly specialized areas because of the competitive forces found within the industry. Generally speaking, a hatchery is responsible for incubating fertilized poultry eggs, hatching the eggs and caring for the chicks for a short time after hatching. Further, the hatchery is responsible for delivering a predetermined number of chicks to multiple growout houses. The hatchery begins the process of transporting the chicks to a growout house within hours of hatching.
This transportation process begins by moving the chicks from incubation areas to a conveyor system, where the chicks are moved through a counting system used by the hatchery to determine the number of chicks being shipped to a growout house. After the chicks pass through the counting system, the chicks are deposited into a collection tray, which is approximately 24 inches wide by 24 inches long by 4 inches high and is located beneath the end of the hatchery""s conveyor system. The chicks fall from a height of about one foot into the collection tray. Once the collection tray is fully loaded with chicks, it is placed on a dolly. After a dolly has been fully loaded with containment trays, generally ten trays, the dolly is rolled into a vehicle in order to transport the chicks to a growout house. Typically, the vehicle used to transport the chicks to the growout house is a used school bus that has been converted to a chick transportation device by removing the passenger seats. Once the containment trays are in place on the vehicle, the dolly is removed and returned to the hatchery to get another load of containment trays. Typically, the containment trays are not secured while in the delivery vehicle; rather, the trays are simply stacked on the floor of the delivery vehicle. Each vehicle is capable of holding multiple stacks of containment trays for delivery to a growout house.
The chicks are deposited in a growout house by manually unloading all of the portable racks outside of each growout house. Each individual containment tray is then removed from the portable rack. In one method, the containment trays are loaded on a flat bed trailer. The flat bed trailer is then pulled through the growout house while laborers deposit the chicks into the growout house by turning the containment trays upside down. In another method, laborers carry the containment trays from the portable racks located outside of the growout house into the growout house, where the chicks are then deposited by turning the containment trays upside down. After all of the containment trays have been unloaded, the vehicle returns the empty containment trays to the hatchery, where the trays are unloaded from the vehicle, cleaned, and reloaded with chicks to stock another growout house.
While the method of delivering chicks set forth above has succeeded in delivering chicks to numerous growout houses, the process is very labor intensive and inefficient. For instance, laborers are needed for loading the containment trays with chicks, loading the containment racks on the delivery vehicle, driving the transportation vehicle between a hatchery and a growout house, unloading containment tray racks from the delivery vehicle at the growout house, removing chicks from the containment trays and placing them within the growout house.
Furthermore, this system is very inefficient. Currently, when a delivery vehicle returns from delivering chicks, anywhere from twenty to forty portable racks must unloaded and replaced with portable racks loaded with chicks. It is far more desirable for the delivery vehicle to arrive at the hatchery, unload its empty containers, load full containers and leave for its next destination within a very short period of time. Essentially, the more time the delivery truck is spent on the road driving, the more money the operation is making.
Thus, a need exists for a system for transporting chicks from a hatchery to a growout house which is more efficient because it uses less labor and is faster than systems currently in use.
This invention relates to a portable device for transporting fowl, including chicks, ducklings, poults and other young fowl, from a hatchery to a growout house. The portable device is composed of a plurality of vertically stacked conveyor belts, each capable of supporting the fowl. The portable device further includes a plurality of wheels so that it can be moved within a hatchery and loaded onto a delivery vehicle. Additionally, the portable device is sized to fit within a climate controlled compartment attached to a delivery vehicle.
The process for loading the portable device with young fowl is initiated by attaching a loading slide to the portable device and positioning the portable device within a hatchery so that the loading slide is proximate to a hatchery conveyor belt. As the young fowl drop from the hatchery conveyor belt onto the loading slide, they are moved to the conveyor belt on the portable device. Each conveyor belt is loaded with chicks by slowly moving the conveyor belt forward as chicks come off of the loading slide. Once the conveyor belt is fully loaded, a door positioned proximate to the conveyor belt on the portable device is closed, and the loading slide is positioned proximate to another conveyor belt on the portable device for loading. After the loading process is complete, the portable device is placed within a climate-controlled compartment attached to a delivery vehicle. The delivery vehicle then transports the fowl to a growout house.
At the growout house, the fowl are unloaded by first backing the delivery truck into the growout house. An unloading slide is then positioned proximate to a conveyor belt that is to be unloaded. The driver then slowly begins to drive the delivery vehicle forward while nearly simultaneously opening the door proximate the conveyor belt and actuating the conveyor belt to unload the young fowl. The delivery vehicle should proceed at a rate that enables all of the young fowl to be released within the growout house before the delivery vehicle reaches the entrance of the growout house. After all of the young fowl have been released at a single growout house, or within multiple growout houses, the delivery vehicle transports the portable device to a hatchery.
At the hatchery, the portable device can be unloaded and replaced with a portable device previously loaded with young fowl. Thus, the delivery vehicle need only stay at a hatchery""s loading dock long enough to unload an empty portable device and load a portable device loaded with young fowl that is ready for delivery. Alternatively, the empty portable device can be loaded with fowl while remaining within the climate-controlled compartment of the delivery vehicle.
The ability to load and unload the portable device from a delivery vehicle provides numerous advantages. Unloading the device from the delivery vehicle allows the device to be thoroughly cleaned after each use, greatly reducing the chances of young fowl developing infections. Further, the delivery vehicle is not required to be at the loading dock while a portable device is being loaded. For instance, a portable device may be loaded within a hatchery while the delivery vehicle is completing a separate delivery. When the delivery vehicle returns to the hatchery with an empty portable device, the empty device is unloaded from the delivery vehicle and a portable device is loaded onto the delivery vehicle. The process of unloading an empty device and loading a full device takes only a few minutes. In contrast, loading the portable device while positioned within a climate-controlled compartment on a delivery vehicle takes considerable more time, thereby decreasing the efficiency of the process.
Another advantage is the ability to release the young fowl without the use of multiple laborers. Traditionally, trays 2 feet wide by 2 feet long have been unloaded from a delivery vehicle and carried by laborers into a growout house. While the traditional method requires numerous laborers to unload a delivery truck, this invention only requires a single person. For instance, an entire portable device can be unloaded by a driver from the cab of the delivery vehicle. Furthermore, a fully loaded portable device can be unloaded faster than the traditional process. Thus, this invention can fill a growout house with young fowl faster and more efficiently than the traditional process.